A finely spun album

The eighth solo album by Annakin - once the voice of the Baden-based trip-hop combo Swandive - begins with one of the most beautiful songs she has recorded during her long career. It is called Marian and is something like a sounding program booklet. She wrote the song when the attack on Mariupol began, the artist explains. Later, she realized that it summed up the theme of the whole album. "It's about protection and war and, above all, about catharsis. It's about an experience that you have to process in order to find your way to creativity and create something new."

After the frustration of the lockdown, which had ruined all kinds of plans, she went into a veritable creative frenzy, which culminated in her trip to La Frette Studio near Paris - an elegantly dilapidated villa where Nick Cave, Marie-Joe Thério and Marianne Faithfull have also created sonic delicacies. This studio was chosen not least because it was equipped with instruments that met the artist's sonic expectations: a Bösendorfer piano, for example, which sounds as if it were wrapped in a absorbent cotton cocoon (ha!), a massive Oberheim synthesizer and a Neve mixing console. As with their last album, the recordings were made under the aegis of British producer Ed Harcourt, who can look back on a series of noble, idiosyncratic albums as a singing songwriter. According to Annakin, it is thanks to him that the album is less electronic and more piano-heavy.

The title Cocoon not only sums up the mood in terms of the theme, it also metaphorically describes the effect of these gauze-like, transparent songs. They need time to draw the listener in, but the threads are strong ... Another fine chapter in the story of a tireless, quiet adventurer.

Annakin: Cocoon, Phonag Records, annakin.net